French firm buys Tieto’s UK mortgage and savings business
Tieto Corporation is selling its UK financial services products business to Sopra Group, a French global technical consulting company, based in Paris.
The unit, formerly known as AttentiV, provides mortgages, savings, credit and debt collections systems to banks, building societies, lenders and collection agencies in the UK. This business currently employs around 160 people.
AttentiV was acquired by Tieto, the Nordic IT services player, in 2005 having been listed on the AIM market for just over a year before that. Net sales of the divested business amounted to €22 million in 2011.
Per Johanson, executive vice president, industry solutions at Tieto, said: "The divestment is part of Tieto’s strategy to exit non-core businesses. The synergies between our UK-based products business and the rest of Tieto’s business in the country and other parts of financial services are very low and therefore we have decided to divest it.
“The rest of Tieto’s business in the UK remain unchanged, i.e. our current services and customer relations for transaction banking products (payments and cash management), capital markets (securities), forest and energy solutions will continue.”
Sopra has also acquired the UK business of Euronext listed IT services company Business & Decision. This provides business intelligence, CRM and e-business systems for customers in the financial services, retail and public sector verticals.
Sopra’s existing UK operations are primarily made up of Scottish outsourcing business Newell & Budge which it acquired from the founders in 2005 for £45m although Sopra has apparently done very little with it.
Sopra is involved in European consulting, IT services and software development markets. The Sopra Group generated revenue of €1.17 billion in 2010 and employs more than 13,000 people. The two new acquisitions will boost Sopra’s UK revenues to over €100m.
Megabuyte Newswire commented: “The former AttentiV business has not been shown much love by its current owner. We believe that it will take some time and much work to get the Tieto business moving again.”
